Comment by guax

> built by foreign multinationals and then expropriated by Chávez in 2007?

If you follow this reasoning - after what happened today - you will get Iran 2.0: Venezuelan boogaloo

I have zero optimism that after this - ordinary Venezuelans will have better outcomes in 10 years time.

Current USA government is some weird klepto-oligrachy. Hates brown people. It’s not doing it out of benevolence to Venezuelans. Venezuelans will get either colonialist resource extraction treatment or some power vacuum will bring just another despot.

Your comment triggers so many thoughts, but the first one is I'm so friggin' naive, which is embarrassing. In my fantasy world corporations make investment decisions based on risk. They invest in a country like Venezuela and part of the due diligence is evaluating whether things may go sideways, like in any investment, and what plan b is if they do. And if plan b is getting the government to backstop you with money, guns and/or regulations then that would not be a viable strategy.

But, at every level in the US, that plan b is viable. And it's used over and over and over again, from small local businesses with local politicians to the US Federal Government and military for the likes of the oil industry.

At what point do you just accept the truth: that you (me!) are the dumb one because you hold onto this fantasy of how you think things ought to be as opposed to how they are?

That’s the story in every oil producing third world country. Without western countries, and these days China, they would just have oil in the ground because they lack the technology and capital to explore for it and extract it. They want the colonizers to come just long enough to install the oil spigots then leave.

As someone living in a country where all of our oil wealth is being extracted by American corporations - America has a very special talent for "convincing" government officials to sign away their citizen's oil wealth. Not repairing that theft by nationalizing the oil seems more criminal than allowing the corporations to continue

If it was done in a legal process then it should be litigated in that country.

What happens to the infrastructure built or businesses run or labor contributed by “illegal” immigrants who are now deported? Does the USA somehow reverse it and make it disappear?

Such a line of reasoning used to justify this kind of extrajudicial and warlike activity is somewhat similar to France’s nonsensical demand for long term reparations from Haiti for colonial infrastructure.

American interventionism in Latin America goes back hundreds of years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary

There has never not been a bully in anarchic systems.

You mean the lady that basically called for this invasion, praised Trump and MAGA, promised she would let western companies extract whatever they want in exchange for personal power? Yeah, surely this will end well for Venezuelans.

He's just said she's not being considered.

This particular quote isn't dementia, he's making a joke, it's the "Donroe Doctrine" because DONald Trump is now expanding it or whatever.

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When you're talking about changed laws, are you referring to the civil case against E. Jean Carroll? And when you are talking about "charges that the banks said weren't even an issue" are you talking about the civil fraud case? No banks were victims in the hush money case, which is where the felonies are from.

You are confusing different cases. The one he was convicted for was falsifying business records. That was an open and shut case where no banks were involved and no law has to be changed.

There were a couple of dpdgy cases against him but he was not convinced of any of them.

Get real

Isn't the 34 counts due to the fact that the trial concluded that Trump paid Daniels via Cohen but hidden the payment as "legal expenses" and therefore falsified 34 different documents?

It is not like they invented extra fake actions that Trump did not do, it is all part of the same fraud. Either you recognize that Trump was guilty in this affair, and he gets X counts of fraud, X being a large number due to the number of document involved (and maybe someone can argue on the exact count, but 34 or 28 is not a big difference, so it is a different argument that move the goalpost), or Trump was not guilty at all. You cannot really say "well, Trump is guilty for the first 2 counts, but then not the 32 other counts": how can he be guilty in one document and not be guilty in the other which is basically identical except for the date?

Also, isn't a large number of counts of conviction pretty common in case of fraud? (for exactly the reason I've given: the falsification of each document counts for 1 count)

People who claims that 34 counts of conviction is the result of a political persecutions seems to have no idea that 1) this is usually how it works, this is usually what people get for fraud, there was no special treatment for Trump, 2) pretending that it was maybe 1 or 2 counts of felony but not 34 does not make any sense, 3) even if they wanted, it would not have been possible for the trial to conclude "just 1 or 2 counts", and it is therefore ridiculous to pretend that this number is the result of a political bias where they choose the higher number just to be mean toward Trump.

> and help the Democrat Party keep the presidencty

You're writing your own narrative there bud. I'm not even a USA citizen, I have literally zero ability to influence the USA electorate to any degree. So cut the rhetoric, it's tiring and frankly destructive to real discussion.

I'm neither gullible nor a zealot. Trump has a long standing history of ripping people off for many millions of dollars, regardless of the currency. There's an endless supply of receipts, give me a break.

And that's long before we even consider that he's literally operating illegal wars (not approved by congress), which _is_ breaking USA law.

So one batch of crimes is fine? Is that what you’re saying?

This seems like an intellectual gymnastics exercise in justifying corruption

We'll probably find out sometime around the first week of January, 2029.

Law and your list are not the same.

Trump definitely killed probably 100s of thousands of people, with how he handled COVID, and USAID. The law doesn’t consider those as murders, but it’s quite obvious that they were.

The rape on your list is even funnier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._T... Oh sorry, sexual assault.

And theft is the funniest, because he was convicted basically for stealing from his companies.

Trump has lost lawsuits related to sexual abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._T...

Also, the laws of the world have definitely not had the same list for hundreds of years, and the old ideas of those things are somewhat different to the modern versions. For example, for most of those hundreds of years, "rape" wasn't just about intercourse, it was about kidnapping (same etymology as "rapture": snatch and carry off). This is specifically why spousal rape, in the modern usage of the term, needed to be added to the statue books: little to no thought given to the idea of a husband kidnapping their own wife.

Also on that list for hundreds of years: charging interest on loans.

Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote sounds like an admission of sexual battery to me. Now, it's important to note that I'm not a lawyer, but here's the thing: lawyers have also said this about that quote.

Even if you ignore all the stuff about Epstein, even if you limit yourself to just that self-chosen set of goalposts, he's a wrong-un.

Certain crimes tend to be low in dictatorships, so I don't think that's a good indicator of anything.

What about the storming of the Capitol 6th January? The criminals got pardoned and the people investigating the crimes conducted that day were fired. This shows that Trump does not care about law and order at all, only about personal power and control.

That was the policy that allowed him to build a social welfare state for people tired of being exploited. Famine decreased, life expectancy increased, and the HDI became high. Unfortunately, this ended when the country was sanctioned and embargoed.

You mean due to the collapse that the United States engineered?

The Saudis did it in the 1970s. It's a great policy.

Where it failed is that Venezuelans are an utterly corrupt people lacking any sense of nationalism or patriotism.

He was awful from the start, sending political opponents to prison and transferring oil money to himself and his croneys, but he claimed to be taking from the rich to give to the poor, so the Western left lapped it all up. It took them years to realise what he was actually doing (from the start).

Chavez was corrupt but the people he replaced were also corrupt. Even when Venezuela was "rich", most of the people were poor and felt like they weren't benefiting from it. The US is probably going push Venezuela to that prior state, where the country is rich on paper but most people are struggling, setting up a call for another Chavez. That assumes the US can just waltz into the country and take complete control, which is probably not going to happen.

You always get that last golden egg out when you kill the goose.

Any theory on the choice of state jurisdiction for DoJ case?

^ edit: "The previous administration..." should be "The administration previously..."

The War Powers Act actually does allow this. Congress has to be back filled within 48 hours after the action (and they were). He can also station troops up to 60 days without congressional approval.

As Jonathan Turley reports https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt... this operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant (issued by the Biden DOJ and outstanding since 2029) and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega in 1989 - which was tested in multiple US courts. So like it or not there is longstanding court affirmed precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.

“ it's completely unacceptable”

How do you reach this conclusion that you can’t help suffering?

You act as if they don't have loopholes for this or that there will be consequences when the military industrial complex is behind things. Were there any consequences for Iraq WMD BS

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Why? It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges. In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama

Well at least the nearly 8 million who voted for the opposition in Venezuela and the nearly 8 million who have left.

Admittedly I cannot, I'm not Venezuelan and not familiar enough with the country.

which was true

Didn't a lot of Austrians want that?

Didn't the East Germans later want to be annexed by West Germany?

Don't the people of both Koreas want unification?

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I say what goes around comes around.

It wouldn’t have been a justification before now, but he’s created the precedent. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

If Trump made himself king and dragged the US so far into corruption and poverty that another country could so easily capture us, yeah I'd be fine with them bagging him.

Right, that’s not the issue. The issue is national sovereignty. The US just started taking over South America.

There's a massive difference, and that difference is that American oil companies, unlike the Venezuelan state run industry, are actually very competent at extracting oil. This means more good paying jobs, more state revenue, and massive economic growth. Contrary to the claims of most of the economically illiterate morons commenting here, having a functional local oil industry run by foreign companies will actually be great for Venezuela.

Definitely not, but the furthest away the ones profiting from something are, the worse it can get.

It is definitely not a guarantee that a local enriching elite will at some point lead to something better, but most examples that come to mind about "colonies" (places very far from a center of power), resulted in said places to develop much harder.

But neither the Venezuelan elite nor the American elite will tolerate any hint of democracy. And neither elite will be satisfied with merely exploiting the oil.

I wasn't even thinking about the drugs. Is that a real thing? North Korean nuke isn't a real concern.

Iraq had no goal. The stated reason was WMDs and 9/11, so bogus and unrelated. Stability wasn't our concern either, I mean we funded Saddam Hussein to begin with. US companies did set up oil drilling, but I really don't think the driving motivation was oil, otherwise we'd have gone to Venezuela first.

> I'm surprised no lesson the US learnt from similar overthrows in the past, but again this is Trump.

Its not Trump, its the US.

Someone always comes along trying to attack/occupy a country. Making big promises. Years later when nothing is achieved. Someone else will come along talking about how much US is spending, taxpayers dollars being lost, failures etc.

In recent example, Afghanistan and Trump come to mind. Everyone talked about how Afghanistan was a waste of taxpayer dollars. But now here we are.

The only thing which I can say specifically about Trump is that I wouldn't be surprised if the flip towards "Venezuela was a waste of taxpayer money" happens during his administration and he comes out saying "I have never heard of Maduro".

“ How about not going there at all for whatever reason, under any circumstances.”

What moral and ethical system brings you this supposition?

> When we kicked out Russians from Middle East we were not aware they kept islam jihadists at bay, then Al Quaida came to live and we all now how it ended.

I thought the US was well aware of this, since the US was funding the Mujahideen at the time?

Let's not sacrifice anymore Americans in the name of freedom, but the number was substantially fewer than 10,000, not anywhere close to 150,000. Perhaps that many Iraqis died, or maybe even more.

>Are we still in the spirit of sacrificing 150,000 American soldiers in the name of freedom, like we did in Iraq?

What are you talking about? Even Vietnam only had a third of that many casualties. Who told you this bullshit? ChatGPT?

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There isn't one, the third option was to do nothing. But there wasn't a fourth option.

I'm not sure. Either people are reading it as though I'm approving what Trump does (I'm not), or they are and don't like my description of it.

I'm a bystander but mildly optimistic.